Dendrobium ravanii in natural light

[mr. suarez]

I used to photograph flowers using flash, but during the past year I have begun to employ natural light for many of my subjects. Why? To get rid of those annoying harsh shadows and overt, often unnatural saturation.


Dendrobium ravanii is from section Calcarifera and was described by Jim Cootes in 2008 in the German orchid magazine OrchideenJournal and was named in honour of the collector of the first specimens, Ravan Schneider, a resident of Puerto Galera in Oriental Mindoro, Philippines. The plants often grow low down on tree trunks, amongst thin layers of mosses, at an altitude of around 400 m asl in mixed dipterocarp forests. The odourless flowers are up to 2.7 cm across and last 8 days.

Ravan is a good friend to Jim (jimec), Ron (walingwaling), Mietek (lanhua) and myself and is without a doubt one of the coolest German guys in the Philippines!

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[walingwaling]

Nicely done Wally!
when i had my flash problems, i was forced to try out different things and it often turned out well, that is if weather conditions were nearly perfect. Its also much more time consuming, so all in all both ways are good to know.

[mr. suarez]

Yes you are right, it is time-consuming. And every time I want to compose photos using natural light, I always have to close the doors and windows so as not to admit any air movement- or the subject will sway. Even a slight movement will cause a blurry picture. And it's even worse when I use both natural light and flash in conjunction (this provides really crisp photos without the harsh shadows): as the shutter speed is set to very slow levels, I even have to hold my breath while the 10 second timer is ticking!

[walingwaling]

Very true, i can relate to the "holding your breath" part. It still fascinates me, every time you think there is absolutely no breeze out there, you are proven wrong....

[lanhua]

Wally, yes you are right, he is a cool man and my good friend.
Regarding photography. For the same reason I've stoped to use my ring flash and now use just natural light. I can write a long article about wind and patience. But fortunately, I can increase the ISO sensivity of my camera up to 1600 or more, so even the sky is cloudy, I can use very short exposure time, like 1/300 or 1/600. For presentantion in the internet the quality is good enough. I'm using 100 macro lens and depth of focus is my bigger problem. On reproduction scale 1:1 depth of field is just 3 or 5 mm. No way to make sharp picture of the whole plant.

[Brutal_Dreamer]

Very nice, Wally. Lovely orchid bloom and photo!

cheers,
BD

[pavel]

Wonderful pic, Wally!

[zainal abidin]

Coool Wally, I prefer with flash no way in the jungle to get nice photos due to poor lights and airy. However when the sunlight very strong ya perfect environment to take picture without flash.

[rudimasara]

beautiful

[mr. suarez]

Thanks all! Mietek, how I envy you for being able to use an ISO upwards to 1600+. In my case, white noise is already apparent at ISO 400. So to get clearer photos, I drag it down to 64 which forces me to use sloooow shutter speeds and a truckload of patience... But like you, I find it (almost?) impossible to take clear photos of the entire plant.

Zainal, when I'm in the forest, I still make an effort to use natural light, especially if the subject is illuminated by sunlight and there is little to no breeze (I always carry a tripod around, as Ron can attest). Otherwise, there's no other option but to use a flash.